Model Andrej Pejic Bashed by FHM Men's Magazine

In a potential sign of progress gone awry, FHM Men's Magazine recently named gender-bending model Andrej Pejic 98th sexiest woman in the world, to the excitement of many in the fashion world as well as Andrej himself. The blurb, however, was nothing more than violently transphobic sentiment and gender binary-enforcing bias.

FHM quickly took down the post from their site, but not before internet users grabbed a screenshot:

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Seriously FHM? We don't need your approval to be different. Boys have been as pretty (if not moreso) since time immemorial. Get over it. Andrej is gorgeous, and he also gets paid for it. Why does that upset you so? Not one of you pays that mans bills, so worry not about what he looks like, how he presents himself, and whom he cavorts with.

Some of you could stand to do a little bit of homework (or would that be far too much for your small minds to handle?) because gender and gender expression is not always black and white. All of the testosterone-fueled hate spewing in the world isn't going to change that fact, so please keep the bigoted opinions and gay-trans-gender bashing giggles in the locker room with the rest of your unmentionables. We don't want to see any of it. Thanks.

Wow you point to straight man's discrimination towards him then show gay man's discrimination towards him by placing him under the transgender heading.As far as I've heard he's androgynous likes to blur the lines but that doesn't really make him trans or mean he'll do it for the rest of his life. He's making bank for it. If he's gay,Bi or straight why not respect his masculinity by claiming him as a gay, Bi or Straight man instead of rejecting him like your straight brothers. Also in case you didn't notice everyone is using masculine pronouns to describe him I've never heard a person use feminine pronouns to describe him. Some men wear women's clothes that doesn't make them any less of a man and it doesn't merit dumping them in the transgender LGB garbage bin.

I definitely hear you, I've been following Andrej for a while now and recognize that he's never self-identified as trans. I put this story under the transgender/intersex category more based on the nature of FHM's remarks, but I do hear why you might think I am calling him trans. I also intentionally used masculine pronouns for him based on my familiarity with his career and interviews.

I hear you Jake and I didn't mean to pick on you think you could get Bil to add transsexual to the transgender/Intersex category? I mean its not like it isn't obvious that the word transgender is highly insulting to some of us. Don't believe me just look at my picture and yes I am a real transsexual woman who's never been transgender or LGB attached. Also here is a link to something I'm sending up the political ladder it might help you understand why I don't like the word transgender and why its going to get a lot harder to justify its use. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=165082160221442

Bil if it is okay with you I'd like submit the letter I provided a link to for posting as a Bilerico article. If you agree to allow it I would like you to repost the editor submission link and I'll get it submitted today.I think it would provide a good opportunity to have this debate with the easily verifiable information contained in the letter.

It's obvious from a brief look at FHM that it's a stroke mag for straight teen boys. I'm glad they realized that the article was wrong and took it down, or, perhaps, that it was inconsistent with their more innocent mission.

This is really a problem. No, the problem isn't that many young men are naturally androgynous and usually grow out of it by the time they're thirty. I was tempted to comment on Kelly Winters' post regarding the removal of transvestic fetishism from the DSM. I don't feel I belong to a "community" however. I never worked for a Fortune 500 company. I am not a "ski bum". I am not an academic. I never graduated college. I never served in the armed forces. I took a strong stand against the Viet Nam War. I am not eighteen. I strongly opposed both wars in Iraq. I don't have anything in common with Marc Bolan or anyone in a big hair band when they were androgynous in their twenties. I just wish this would stop. The problem is that an arrogant bunch of activists would throw me into a category labeled "intersex/transgender". I am neither. I don't care if a judge may issue a decision against my female sex designation. That's it, however, regardless. My medical history is no one's business.

I know intersex people. Many of them are married in heterosexual relationships. Many were born with very complicated situations. Intersex has nothing to do with transgender even if some may "indentify" (yes, scare quotes, most definitely). Most I know are, like me, sympathetic to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people. What you are doing, however, is thrusting people into third sex categories. It's wrong and ultimately violent. I don't consider myself intersex in the way it is usually understood. I don't actually know what I mean when I say that except people do not understand intesex or the nature of sex at all, as far as I can see. Pejic is a very good example of how close male and female can be and how time factors into the sex equation. People like Ray Blanchard are sick. So is his colleague, Kenneth Zucker. WPATH is very problematic, too. It is significant Zucker is a prominent member on the Intersex Committee at WPATH. That, in itself is a gross injustice. Sex is not a binary phenomenon. It's people like Blanchard and Zucker who are the fetishists. They fetishize two sex paradigms that has no basis in reality. The stigmatize and pathologize anyone who doesn't neatly fit into their two fetishized concepts of sex.

What continues to happen over and over here at Bilerico is the dumping of very diverse groups of people who don't fit your two sex category into the transgender bin. Now, it appears you are including intersex in the same bin, the way WPATH has done. This has to stop. I don't know who has the time to keep up with this crap. Groups like Bilerico, WPATH, etc. are working overtime, while many of us look on in shock and horror while we're handled in very high handed ways that inevitably affects our legal status and medical care. I won't speak for intersex people but I will speak for myself. I wish you'd stop throwing me under your umbrella. When will it stop?

Sorry for the typos, the verbs that don't match the plural nouns and other mistakes. I am busy, however. That's the point. Who has the time to keep up with how they are being handle by professional organizations like the APA WPATH, state and federal governments and activists who would impose categories on us? You just make it apparent how powerless we are to have any control over our fates if we are actually "transgender", have a transsexual past or were born intersex. It's impossible to keep up.

Edith follow the link to my letter you may not agree with it but I believe complaining here or to any LGBT group is becoming wasted energy. You want to bring about change, this issue has to be taken out of their hands and into the mainstream.

Lisa I followed the link and read your letter. I don't disagree with your intent but the letter....well in my opinion it needs major editing. I am trying to be helpful so please don't react adversely. Your service to the country and the proud American bit versus communism are distracting and extraneous to the message. Quite frankly most of the letter came off to me as a tirade. It is too long and disjunctive. Bear with me a moment. Most people could care less about the derivation of words or who coined them. Why bore them with Virginia Prince?

What is the core message you seek to communicate? Is it the evil GLBT or is it simply that some women are born with a penis and some men like to play at feminine roles; the two being very different? I won't do a rewrite for you because it needs to be your message not mine. I would suggest, however, before you recast it that you watch Aleshia Brevard if you haven't already. http://www.aleshiabrevard.com/Videos.htm

I appreciate your comment Deena and yes it probably needs revision. The communism part while seeming distracting is very important to me because of the Time and Place I served in the military. I am a Veteran of the Occupation Of Berlin during President Reagan's first term. That places me firmly on the front lines of the cold war at a time we were playing chicken with the Soviet Union in a stepped up manner. For that reason I am sensitive to a few things being called a Nazi, or a Communist, or associating with anything or anyone that supports communism or their ideals. So for me calling me Transgender because of its history is very insulting and I think disrespectful to my service in a way probably only Americans old enough to know can understand. Again thanks for your feedback.

Just to help you out in helping your letter be taken seriously. The current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is not the DSM 4, but the DSM-IV-TR (there was a revision that happened around the year 2000.) Be sure to get the abbreviation and the title right, it will help you sound more researched. I also think that your discussion of communism detracts from your point. I had to read very carefully to understand because that added a lot of confusion. A rule of thumb I've learned as someone with a master's degree in psychology is that sometimes, less is more, and the more complicated you make an explanation, the easier it is for people to misunderstand your point.

In terms of the content of your letter, as far as I know, the vast majority of reputable doctors who do gender reassignment surgery require those who want the surgery to get significant counseling. These doctors don't want to risk a malpractice suit by performing a major surgery as this that has such great psychological impact on someone who isn't ready for it, or who hasn't thought it through properly.

I've only heard a small amount of information on this topic, and I did appreciate what you had to say. Best of luck to you!

Thanks for your feedback and I put hopefully a better explanation about why the word transgender and its attachment to Leslie Feinberg is somewhat disturbing to me in a response to Deena just above your reply. You also have to understand the way Leslie Feinberg used the word transgender to basically coral a whole bunch of people into the LGBT effectively silencing them as individuals and as diverse groups is a very communist thing to do. I will take your advice on the DSM-IV-TR and make sure to spell it correctly. I hate to separate the issue of the history of the word transgender from how it effects me as veteran but I can see how it causes confusion and might be best left out. Thanks for your advice and I hope somehow you gained some knowledge that can help you in your practice and gave you an interesting history lesson.

I've been very busy lately. I read your letter tonight. I share some of your concerns. I am coming from a very different place, though. I flipped out with my response, here. I have a lot of respect for Kelly Winters. I support her efforts to have TF removed from the DSM. I guess my reply was off topic and I tried to reply to two posts I really didn't even want to get involved with. This post is put under Intersex/Transgender, however.

I wouldn't have said anything about Pejic. I don't think there is anything wrong with an "ethereally beautiful elf". Transgender, however, is just way too confusing. If you want to feel some heat check on the feud between the ISGD people led by Tracie O'Keefe and long time intersex activists in Australia. The dynamics are very complicated. Surgery/ non-op questions do not have simple answers as far as I am concerned. We differ there but transgender, I think, is way too confusing. This post is evidence of that. Putting everything together in a transgender/intersex category and including this story along with it just seems so out of touch. I can't believe no one else sees the problems involved.

I don't see community at all. I see binary pro/con factions but I don't look at things that way, myself. I have never understood what I had to grapple with as a matter of transcending gender or being deceptively androgynous. Call me what you want for saying that. Call me crazy or worse. Self acceptance is about accepting myself the way I am, not seeking community for the sake of being part of something and compromising who I am. I can't understand how anyone who actually had anything in common with me could after what I've been through.

I don't belong here at this thread. It's the RuPaul Drag Race scenario, all over again. Why does it keep happening? Why do people insist on comparing people who are from very disparate circumstances based on inconsequential superficialities? Unlike you, I actually feel I have a place in the LGBT but the message I keep getting is that I am fooling myself. I deeply resent the suggestion that my place is at the end of the acronym. I am old and married. I am what I am. If someone wants to insist I am transgender, who's gonna stop them. I am not so out of it that I don't know what they're implying. This is way too complicated to even discuss. No one has a clue what I am concerned about but how much does it really matter, anyway? Let everyone fight their cream puff wars. I am sure there are many looking on in amusement. Just checking in at the various locations on the internet I end up going to leaves me in utter despair. C'est la vie, until death do we part.

Edith thank you for reading my letter it took me three hours to write in the middle of the night. I'm now definetely convinced it needs editing LOL. I have no doubt that you are a very deep thinker and a thoughtful writer.You should never have to compromise who you are to fit into the LGBT. It is not you that has a problem it is the LGBT with its neat compartments that god help you if you mess with them. They are like the OCD neat freaks from hell except when it comes to the word Transgender. I think of the word Transgender as the LGB equivalent of a garbage receptacle or a junk drawer where everything you don't really want or use goes. In a positive sign tonight or maybe not on Bilerico one of the posters said that drag queens weren't Transgender they're now called " Gender Progressive." I prefer the less sophisticated way of identifying them gay man in dress. You think you could convince Kelly Winters to label them tranvestic fetishists in time for April fools day next year? Seriously I think if you talked to me away from Bilerico you would find we don't differ in opinion as much as you might think. I have spent a lot of time studying endocrine disrupters, transexing animals and enough other sex related stuff to give many a headache myself included. I think you have spent more time looking at it through the psychological side while I've looked at it from the physical side. I think that those who were quick to embrace transgender theory as science are dangerous and lazy thinkers with maybe more of a political agenda than a scientific one. How do you get from a forced upon political association to well they have crossdressing in common so we'll just say they're all the same without considering motive? As for Tracie O'Keefe and everything else that is going on you are right how do you keep up with this stuff or maybe that is the point you can't. If you can never keep up you can never grab on to stop it. Back to your place in the LGBT you do have one but I believe like me you have to step outside of it. Only by stepping outside of it can you fight the prejudism that is within it. As long as you complain within it your complaints will only fall on deaf ears. Stir up some crap on the outside that threatens to tarnish their neat freak cookie cutter appearance and watch damage control come running. Only then can you become one of the ones looking on in amusement. I don't know about you but I hope its a while till death do us part. :)

I think I had to catch my breath after reading that- no matter what kind of publication this is, to be a professional, widely read publication and post something like that- I couldn't even believe it. It's like a joke almost, it's that bad. Throughout that blurb they continued to spew the old ideas that he's "getting away with something" or "tricking people" as if his identity is all some manipulative stunt. People like him BECAUSE of who is his, not *in spite* of who he is!